Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Don't you just hate it when people with no clue about your profession think that the work you do is so easy that anyone can do it without much training at all?

That scenario is why my cabinetmaker husband and I added this special page to his business web site late last night. It seems that lots of weekend warriors think that they or a handy-type person they know can whip out an intricate custom cabinet in no time at all, so Ed should charge Home Depot's mass-production prices (before markup) or even less for his work ... because they think that he, as a solo cabinetmaker, has less overhead than a furniture factory does. Not gonna happen!

When I encounter civilians who think that they can just jump right into copyediting—or newbie writers who think that now that they've written down their life story, I should be able to edit it for about the cost of one week's worth of groceries for a family of four—I send them to this page and ask them to read carefully the information accessed through all of the links found there concerning various types of editing. Then I then send them to this page.

Nearly all of these folks then vanish. The ones who don't are possibly ready to study to be copyeditors or to pay realistic fees for having their manuscripts edited.

6 comments:

Umm, yes, hate it. The most uncomfortable situations for me, perhaps, have been the times that people have asked me (or have had someone ask me on their behalf) to set them up with my clients or even give them my "overflow" work; usually, the person has no direct or related experience, and I have no clue what his or her level of skill is, or worse, I know the person doesn't have the necessary skill set. Awkward.

Yes, it makes my blood boil to be asked by either a former co-worker or a neophyte for my client's names. You'd be surprised how often that has happened. They never get a name! Does a salesman reveal his contacts? Suuuurrre!

We speak English so why do we need to study it every year in school? A question in the back (and sometimes front) of my high school students' minds. And when they get their first papers back with "suggestions," they begin to see the light (at least some of them).Laurawww.RebelliousThoughtsofaWoman.com

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